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It’s true that a really nice post could be written about the colorful street people you thought this post was going to be about. One of these days, I’ll be worthy of writing it. The fact is that I am firmly convinced that the prayers and brachot of some of Yerushalayim’s street people have kept my kids healthy, out of serious trouble, and on a Torah path. (There is one holy lady in Meah Sha’arim whose prayers — said with my children’s names tucked between the pages of her Tehillim for over a decade — have felt to me like the prayers of a beloved grandmother. I believe that Hashem surely has counted them as pure love from a pure heart.)

But this post isn’t about Leah and her holy ilk.

It is about the joyful metal artwork on Ha-Zehavit Street. We are privileged to travel this street any time we drive or ride the bus from the Gush into Yerushalayim, via Gilo. Delightful, colorful and playful characters people the grass strip between the lanes of traffic on this well-traveled road, reminding drivers that there’s more to do in life than rush to the office.

Avi and I reminisced about the Alte Heimland. How might such statuary fare in Baltimore, Maryland, or in Lusk, Wyoming? In Baltimore, these colorful cutouts wouldn’t have lasted a month before they were covered with crude graffiti and — uh — anatomically-correct Magic Marker appendages. In Wyoming, the temptation to shoot the cast iron critters full of holes would have been irresistible. But in Yerushalayim, at least thus far, the only additional artwork has been provided by an errant fowl.

Not bad for one of the most controversial cities on the face of the Earth.